HYDERABAD: Daily wage labourers at Malakpet’s Sri Krupa Market are having a hard time getting change for their daily wages. Most of them are being paid in Rs 2,000 and in order to get a change for the note, these labourers have to pay a commission of Rs 200 to the kirana shops on the market premises.
“What would I do with a Rs 2,000 note?” wonders Ramulu, a 30-year-old labourer who has been working in the market since his childhood. “Five of us have to divide the money. We get the notes exchanged at kirana shops at a commission,” he added. Ramulu, nor the other four who work with him, have a bank account. Meanwhile, the kirana shop owners denied charging a commission for changing the Rs 2,000 notes brought to them by labourers. The labourers were reluctant to point out the shop keepers who took the commission. “They will not change our notes,” said Laxman.
“The labourers are hired in clusters,” explains S Pandu an onion dealer. “We hire four to five of them for a day and pay all them by the evening with Rs 2,000. It’s up to the labourers to figure out a way to break the big notes into small ones,” he added. While we can pay them in cheque, the workers themselves prefer to be paid on the same day itself. Most of them don’t even have a bank account, he said.
Subhed
The Onion Traders Association had declared a ten day bandh following the announcement of demonetisation which ended on Nov 24. For the interim period, the Telanagana State Agricultural Marketing Committee (AMC), under the directions of Harish Rao, minister for irrigation, directly supplied onions in the city. The AMC too had left the labourers in the lurch paying the daily wages with old notes. The officials now insist the traders to the pay the labourers through cheques.
“I need the money to meet daily expenses. The cheque takes time,” says Laxman, another daily wage labourer. He has a zero balance account opened under the Prime Minister Jan Dhan Yojana at his home town in Mahabubnagar. But he does not know how to operate it. “I have an ATM card but each time I use it i need someones help,” he added.